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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26972602">Alt. 6 Altered States (Lancelot)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Onehelluvapilot/pseuds/Onehelluvapilot'>Onehelluvapilot</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Whumptober 2020 [13]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Merlin (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Altered Mental States, Alternate Universe - Supernatural (TV) Fusion, Confusion, Dissociation, Gen, Hurt Lancelot (Merlin), Hurt Merlin (Merlin), Hurt/Comfort, Nightmares, Protective Leon (Merlin), Whumptober 2020, disorientation</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 21:06:43</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,567</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26972602</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Onehelluvapilot/pseuds/Onehelluvapilot</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Continued from Alt. 12 Water<br/>Lancelot got Merlin safely to shore, but disoriented after a nightmare, he's having trouble remembering that fact.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Lancelot &amp; Leon (Merlin), Lancelot &amp; Merlin (Merlin)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Whumptober 2020 [13]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1952440</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>29</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Alt. 6 Altered States (Lancelot)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>It was as dark as the ocean water when Lancelot woke and his head was under something. Under the water. Why was he waking up? He hadn’t been the one to be knocked out, at least that’s what he thought; Merlin had. Oh god, no. If Lance was under the water and Merlin had been counting on him to save him, that meant the secretary was drowning too.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He pushed the blankets off of his head, though his arms were slow to respond to his commands and felt weak. Blinking against even the low light in the motel room, he struggled to remember what had happened. It was hard to think around the fog in his head and the aching that had taken over his whole body. He had… had the Kraken hit him? Was that why everything hurt? No, no, it had hit Merlin. Knocked him off the boat and into the water and Lancelot had jumped off after him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The floor was hard as his arm and hip hit it and he knew that would bruise in the morning. He wondered if it would even feel different, since everything hurt already. His shoulders screamed at him as he tried to push himself to sit up, the burn familiar to swimming. He pushed through it, the hell of strained muscles, because Merlin would drown if he didn’t keep going, didn’t get them to shore. Clutching at the bed he’d fallen out of, he managed to make it halfway to standing but his legs were shaking and he could barely breathe.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Lance, hey, what’s wrong?” Leon asked. What was wrong? Was he joking? What was wrong was that he hadn’t been strong enough to keep Merlin, his best friend, alive. But… Leon! Leon was there, and he could trust Leon. Overlapping memories showed the hunter helping him out of the ocean, helping him out of his soaked clothes and drying his hair, but then someone was taking Merlin from him. No, no, they couldn’t… they’d let him drown, Lancelot couldn’t trust them he needed to have Merlin in his arms, keep him safe. “He’s fine, Merlin’s fine, he’s not going to drown,” Leon replied, and oh, he hadn’t realized he was rambling aloud. “Lancelot, calm down.” He reached out and grabbed his shoulders, in what was probably meant to be a comforting or steadying manner, but instead he added pressure to the pain and the hunter screamed despite the rasping in his throat from having inhaled sea water. It didn’t come out very loud, especially not to his ears that still felt half full of water.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh shit I’m so sorry,” Leon apologized, letting go of him, and he wanted to say it was okay, that he couldn’t have known his attempt to help would hurt him and that he shouldn’t feel bad about it, but he couldn’t get the words out because he couldn’t get any air in because he was drowning. There were tears on his face and the feeling of water was Not Helping so it was good when Leon reached over and wiped them away more tenderly than he deserved. Not since he’d let Merlin drown. “Lance, where are you hurt?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m not, I’m fine, it’s Merlin who-”</span>
  <span><br/>
</span>
  
  <span>“Merlin’s okay,” Leon reassured him. “He and Arthur are in the room next door. Apparently it’s a pretty bad concussion, and they wanted to keep him for observation, but you know how stubborn Merlin is about staying in hospitals. As soon as he woke up, he wanted out.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“He’s… so he didn’t…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“He didn’t what, Lancelot?” his friend asked gently. He almost didn’t want to answer, to put voice to his worst fears.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Drown?” he said softly, scared. Leon smiled, not cruelly or mockingly, but gently.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, he didn’t drown. You saved him.” Lance wanted to believe it, he really did, and Leon had a better chance of convincing him than anyone he knew, short of Merlin himself, but gods he was just </span>
  <em>
    <span>scared</span>
  </em>
  <span> and he didn’t know if he could trust anything he heard because he could tell he was disoriented and didn’t know what was real and that was the only thing he knew.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I can’t- I can’t- I can’t,” he stuttered, sounding to his own ears like a broken record until he moved his aching shoulders and used the pain to snap himself out of it. “How do I </span>
  <em>
    <span>know</span>
  </em>
  <span>?” He asked desperately. This wasn’t the first time he’d gotten… lost, trapped somehow in a state between awake and dreaming and just completely suffused with paranoia and fear, but it hadn’t happened in awhile and knowing what was going on only helped so much.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Lancelot, I promise you, he’s okay,” Leon said, and that helped but not enough. “If you can stand up and walk over to the next motel room over, you can see for yourself.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The hunter instantly nodded and started trying to straighten up from where he had been leaning against one of the beds. Leon didn’t reach out to grab him this time, having learned his lesson, but he offered his hands for Lancelot to hold after tucking their room key into his pocket.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Trying to walk was agony as his whole body ached. His knees, shoulders, neck, and lower back were the worst, the sharp points of pressure embedded in the horrible weak feeling of overworked muscles. He leaned heavily against Leon, who opened the door for him. Neither of them were wearing shoes, he realized as he stepped out onto the concrete sidewalk, looking down since his neck hurt less that way. Vaguely, he could recall Leon sitting him down on the edge of the bathtub before unlacing his boots and stripping off his socks. He’d carefully divested him of his wet clothes, dried him off, and helped him into a pair of his own sweatpants and a tank top.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Standing hurt more than walking, since he didn’t have any movement to focus on and distract himself with, and waiting for Arthur to come open the door once they’d knocked was hell. Lancelot nearly lost himself in the pain again. It was like drowning, just not in water this time, from the way it stripped his breath away. Was this what it had felt like? When Merlin had drowned? His body slipping away with nothing he could do about it, because Lance had failed him? He knew that wasn’t right, that Merlin was fine, but he couldn’t make the thought stick in his head since the pain was making his grasp on reality slippery.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What’s going on?” Arthur asked, which was how Lancelot knew he must have looked a mess. He could hear the concern in his voice and he hated it. He didn’t deserve to have people worried about him, not when it was his fault. Not when they should have been grieving for Merlin instead.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“He needed to see Merlin,” Leon replied. Merlin, Merlin’s corpse, and suddenly Lancelot didn’t want to be there at all. He closed his eyes, not wanting to see his best friend dead, not being able to bear the idea of it. Someone was moving him forward though, hands on either side of him, and suddenly being laid down on something soft, his best friend’s death bed, his head being carefully arranged on his narrow chest and… </span>
  <em>
    <span>oh</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Merlin was alive. Lance could hear his heartbeat, feel the movement of his body with each breath. The body next to him was warm as he wrapped his arms around his friend. He could feel as the younger man stirred and cuddled back against him without waking up. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Alive.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“Is he okay?” Arthur asked.</span>
  <span><br/>
</span>
  
  <span>“I think so,” Leon said as he pulled the blankets up over Lancelot and Merlin. “He woke up really disoriented, thinking that he had let Merlin drown, but he should be able to calm down now.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, I meant- Look at his shoulders.” Lancelot shivered as broad fingertips brushed against his back at the edges of where his tank top exposed his shoulders. “That looks like bruising from torn muscles, probably from swimming so far. We should get him into an ice bath, to get the swelling to go down.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, please don’t,” Lancelot said, pulling back from Merlin a little so he wasn’t just muttering against his chest. Being around the warlock always made him feel better, to the point where sometimes he wondered if it was part of his magic to just radiate healing energy, and already he was feeling less confused and scared than he had felt since the kraken had sunk their boat. He didn’t want to risk that by being taken away from him, or worse, feeling like he was drowning again. “I can’t go back in the water.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Leon laid a hand on the back of his head comfortingly. “Okay. We’ll just get some ice for your shoulders and neck then.” Lance nodded, and a second later he heard the door open and close. Merlin shifted a little bit more, turning onto his side and reaching to pull Lancelot against him even tighter. Snuggling against him, the hunter couldn’t remember the last time he was this happy. He almost felt faint from the relief, and even the periodic cramps in his legs and lower back and the discomfort of ice wrapped in a washcloth being settled against his shoulders couldn’t drown that.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Lancelot's disorientation here is based on my own experiences getting stuck in a half-dreaming state. Fortunately it doesn't happen that often, and it's never been something as distressing as thinking I let my best friend drown, but it's still no fun. I'd love to hear what you thought of that aspect of the story or of the fic in general.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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